When writing Python scripts, we often need to pass command line arguments to our program. The sys.argv attribute in Python provides a simple way to access these command line arguments.

What is sys.argv?

In Python, the sys.argv variable is a list that contains the command line arguments passed to the script. The first element (sys.argv[0]) is the name of the script itself, and the subsequent elements (sys.argv[1] onwards) are the arguments passed by the user.

How to use sys.argv

To access the command line arguments using sys.argv, we follow these steps:

1. Import the sys module:

   import sys
   

2. Access the command line arguments using sys.argv:

   argument1 = sys.argv[1]
   argument2 = sys.argv[2]
   

Example

Let’s consider a simple example to illustrate the usage of sys.argv. Assume we have a Python script called my_script.py, which takes two arguments: a file name and a delimiter. We want to print these arguments to the console.

Here is the code for my_script.py:

import sys

filename = sys.argv[1]
delimiter = sys.argv[2]

print("File name:", filename)
print("Delimiter:", delimiter)

To execute this script with command line arguments, we run the following command:

python my_script.py data.txt ","

The output would be:

File name: data.txt
Delimiter: ,

Conclusion

The sys.argv attribute in Python provides a convenient way to access command line arguments passed to a script. By using this attribute, we can enhance the functionality of our scripts and make them more versatile.